Doodles
by hydrabell
Summary: Patty asks Kid to draw with her.


**Author's note: **For some reason I've been having a lot of fun writing short friendship-building fics between Kid and Patty while taking breaks from writing one of my much longer fics lately. This could almost be considered a sequel to the other one I have posted here, (Patty's Dream) though, that's not what I intended. Oh well. Enjoy!

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Kid was busy recomposing some notes he took from Stein's lecture which had gotten ruined by rain earlier that day when Patty walked in and sat a small stack of fresh clean papers on the table beside him along with some colored pencils and pens. The two acknowledged each other; Patty smiled at him and Kid scooted his chair slightly to the side to make elbow room for her. She began to draw. Patty's drawings were really quite good, but she would often ruin them afterward by folding them into origami animals and then destroying them. Kid never understood this practice, but he chose not to question it. Asking Patty why she does the things she does is just as hopeless of an endeavor as asking the sun why he laughs.

She had filled two pages with doodles- front to back- and was working on her third, when she began shuffling around and shifting her glances toward Kid as if she wanted to say something, but didn't want to make him angry. Patty had maintained silence for much longer than what Kid had assumed was possible. It was almost a shame that it couldn't have been longer, Kid thought. She was beginning to become very distracting.

Finally, she spoke.

"Umm, Kid?" She rested her cheek on her hand and turned to face him with big blue eyes.

"Yes, Patty?" Kid's tone was rather dry and he didn't look up from his notes.

"…Nevermind." Patty sighed. She looked back down to her drawing; crestfallen.

A few minutes later she poked his arm gently, which was successful in getting her persnickety friend to face her.

"Yes?" He still looked stern and not in any kind of mood to play.

"I was wondering if you wanted to draw with me, maybe?"

"I'm busy. I need to finish copying the rest of this down before tomorrow." Kid turned her down without a second thought.

"Oh. Sorry."

Patty perked up again. "Well, when do you think you'll be done?"

"I don't know."

If he hadn't turned his gaze back to his work, he would have seen the sorrowful look in Patty's eyes as she reached for the yellow pencil again.

Patty didn't speak again for the rest of the evening.

After Kid finished restoring his notes, he noticed that Patty had left. At some point between the last time she tried to get his attention and now, she'd already gone to bed and left her things at the table. Kid didn't even hear her leave. "Patty, how many times do I have to remind you not to leave things a mess." He muttered under his breath, glaring at the papers she had left strewn about the table. Some were on the floor, and some had been folded into half-animals, but then abandoned before being finished. He began to collect the papers into a neat stack in his hands, but as he stooped to pick one of the pages from the ground something caught his eye.

He turned one loose page around to find a drawing of himself, holding hands with Liz and Patty. In the drawing, he had a huge smile on his face and so did they. His heart softened a little at the sight. His weapons do a lot of things that got on his nerves and often they didn't get along. Sometimes he felt like they did certain things to annoy him on purpose, but he knew that they'd do anything to see him happy, too. Their bond was stronger than usual meister-weapon pairs because theirs was not simply the bond of friendship, but the bond of a family.

"It's getting late, Kid. Aren't you going to bed soon?" Liz called from just outside the doorway, in a pink robe. Kid flipped the drawing back over quickly. "No. I think I'm going to stay up a bit longer."

"Suit yourself, then. Don't complain tomorrow when you're cranky and tired during training." Liz yawned.

Quietly, Kid took out a gridded sheet of paper and a compass as well as a protractor and began to make some determined strokes onto the page. He worked for an hour or two before quickly blowing the stray flecks of eraser dust from the page and lifting it to examine his work. "It'll do." He chuckled, shrugging off his overly-critical tendencies.

Kid padded softly across Patty's floor, careful not to upset her sound slumber, and left the lined page on her side-table where she'd be sure to see it.

The next morning, bright and early, Patty burst from her room and ran down the hall in her pajamas, zooming past her sister who was primping herself in the hallway mirror, and barreled straight into Kid, who had just gotten dressed. She squeezed him hard in a powerful crushing hug, causing him to wheeze and gasp for air. He collapsed upon her release, and she skipped merrily into the bathroom. "Oh my God, what was that all about?" Liz laughed.

"I think I know," Kid coughed and began to regain his composure. "But I'm afraid it's a secret."

"You guys are weird."

Above Patty's bed, pinned on her billboard, was a very precise and very neat drawing of Patty, Liz, and Kid together at a zoo, with a note at the bottom of the page that read:

_I guess I wasn't that busy after all. – __Kiddo_


End file.
